Non-Muslim brothers serve 30,000 iftar meals in Dubai
Sudhakar R. Rao has been a UAE resident for 22 years. He has witnessed Dubai’s journey from a city where the Burj Khalifa had yet to rise above ground level into today’s global metropolis. But one thing that has always amazed the 66-year-old during that time is the spirit of Ramadan.
As ever, this year Sudhakar and his brother Prabhakar and their daughter Aishwarya are simply doing their part to honour that sentiment. The trio, who head Gemini Group Real Estate Developments, are set on delivering 30,000 iftar meals to labourers throughout Dubai.
“We’ve been doing this for the last five or six years,” Sudhakar said. “At first it was a smaller contingent. This time, we are donating 1,000 meals a day every single day for the entire 30-day period.”
From 250 plates to full production
What began as a simple endeavor, producing 250 meals per day, has now blossomed into a full-fledged operation. But to Sudhakar, the scale isn’t what matters; it’s how sincere the gesture is. “What matters for us is to reach the real labour camps and the poor maintenance workers,” he said. “My brother, my daughter and I go to check that everything’s OK, that the food is of good quality. We do it very sincerely. Whatever we do, we are religious with it.”
The family visits the camps several times over the course of the month, not just to oversee distribution, but to engage with the workers.
“We go to make sure that people feel good,” he said. The response has been heartwarming. Camp bosses have even personal-messaged them to thank the family for their efforts, Sudhakar notes.
For Sudhakar, a businessman since age 26 — he started by making an oil and gas venture and then transitioned to real estate — giving does not come with religious strings attached. It is simply personal. He paused when asked why such work means so much to him before responding. “I don’t have a quick, direct answer,” he said. "But we feel good about it. Nobody has forced anybody to do this. It just comes spontaneously."
That same spontaneity has also spilled over into other causes. “When the Pulwama attack happened in India back in 2019, we had contributed a lot to the victims’ families,” he remembered.
Although he moved away from the daily grind of living in his 800-person office, Sudhakar still keeps busy dividing time between business interests in the UAE,
Oman and India. But during the month of Ramadan, his attention is fixed on the community surrounding him.
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